The subject matter disclosed herein relates to the field of tissue culture, and particularly to the field of cartilage tissue culture.
Engineered cartilage tissue may be grown in a research or medical context for use in various reconstructive procedures, including for use in reconstructive procedures related to the meniscus (present in certain joints) and intra-vertebral discs. Current fabrication processes for engineered cartilage tissue typically include a brief period of static culture followed by mechanical conditioning of the engineered tissue by uniaxial compressive loading. In practice, commercially available loading devices are for research scale applications and typically have drawbacks that include, but are not limited to: lack of real-time monitoring of the tissue structure and organization; lack of individual sample measurement data in real-time; destructive testing to acquire compression modulus measurement. Further, manual sample handling involved in the culture process (e.g., sampling the media, transferring the sample, adding media to the vessel, and so forth) introduces a high chance of contamination (i.e., ˜10% failure rate).
As the technology matures and transitions from bench to commercialization, improved solutions for culturing engineered cartilage will be desirable.